Movie notes: A vote for ‘Marigold Hotel’ — and a joke that bites back

For a couple of weeks, I’ve imagined leading off a “Movies We’d Like to See” list with “The Best EROTIC Marigold Hotel.” The joke would be that it was the adult-video spinoff of the indie hit “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” and that it would feature way too much skin from an aging cast of has-been British porn stars.

Or something like that. Hilarious, right?

Well, a group of us went to see “Marigold Hotel” last weekend, and whaddaya know? The “erotic” part wasn’t as far-fetched as I had imagined. There’s a fair amount of humor involving geriatric sex, including a woman (Celia Imrie) trolling for her next conquest and a shower scene that showed way too much of an aging dude.

OK, I guess I deserved that. Thank goodness the shower scene is counterbalanced (sort of) by a scene in which the gorgeous Tena Desae (who’s sort of a Salma Hayek starter kit) strips and gets into bed with her boyfriend (Dev Patel, of “Slumdog Millionaire” fame), the big-dreaming proprietor of the rundown hotel. Or so she thinks.

Dev Patel and Tena Desae.

Anyway… far from being a Full Employment Act for great, aging British actors (Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson and the odious Bill Nighy; OK that last item comes from a painful, personal bias that I’ll explain later), “Marigold Hotel” is a welcome respite from the noisy summer blockbusters, all of which seem to assume their audiences are 90 percent ADHD.

It’s certainly the only summer movie in which my 90-year-old mother-in-law can see anyone even remotely resembling herself. That explains why we had a majority gray audience in our auditorium. I’m sure I lowered the average age substantially, and I graduated high school in the Nixon Administration. The first one.

(NOTE: MY 28-year-old daughter, who REALLY lowered the average age, had the line of the afternoon when she said, wistfully, “I know exactly how those old people feel, since I’m pushing 30.” She was not immediately disinherited, although the thought crossed my mind.)

Anyway, “Marigold,” which debuted at only a handful of theaters in San Antonio, went wide Memorial Day weekend, meaning you no longer have to journey to the Northwest Side to see it at the Santikos Bijou. It’s showing at most S.A. multiplexes. It’s well worth checking out.

Maggie Smith is Muriel, an ex-nanny whose retirement was not voluntary.

It will require some patience from action-film fans, since the only explosions are emotional ones. But the interlocking stories of folks on the cusp of retirement who respond to an ad for a great-sounding home for seniors in India are animated by a great cast.

The players include Dench as a widow who left everything up to her late husband, with dire consequences; Wilkinson as a recently retired barrister who grew up in India and who has a hidden agenda; Smith as a recently let-go nanny (and a major racist) in need of a cheap hip replacement; and Nighy as half of a desperately unhappy couple (with Penelope Wilton) whose retirement funds vanished when their daughter’s start-up business faltered.

They wind up in the company of Patel, who’s trying to revive the old hotel left to him by his father, also a dreamer without a lot of business acumen.

These are a lot of stories to keep up with, and yet director John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”) does a commendable job. His all-star cast of Brits all get their moments in the spotlight without seeming like they’re taking turns. The results are equally hilarious and heartbreaking.

The one problem with so many stories is, they all need to be resolved. That they are, but I had a problem with at least three of those resolutions. Smith’s racist, seemingly helpless character makes a transformation that seems far too easy. Dev Patel’s domineering mother, who disapproves of his choice of vocation AND girlfriend, has a change of heart that strains credulity. Same for Wilton, whose character is so bitter and spiteful, she seems incapable of the self-aware moment that hits suddenly during a traffic jam as they’re on their way to the airport to catch a flight back to England.

Still, “Marigold Hotel” is a worthwhile journey, if a bit bumpy.

“Let us suggest that if you were an aging Brit with a limited income and you moved into the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, you could have done a lot worse,” Roger Ebert notes in his 3 1/2-star review.

Let us also suggest that if you’re looking for a quasi-mainstream summer movie that won’t bust your eardrums, you could hardly do better.

(P.S. About Bill Nighy… Every time I see him, it brings back an awful, deeply repressed memory. Years ago at an Express-News Christmas party — it would have had to have been years ago — a co-worker who had just seen “Love, Actually” said she thought I looked just like ol’ Bill. I loved “Love, Actually” actually, but I thought that Nighy, who played an aging, crusty/almost crispy British rocker with an unlikely Christmas hit, a remake of the Troggs’ “Love Is All Around,” looked like an old leather boot. Nothing personal, Bill, but I’ve never been able to shake that).